tidge

The one thing the Fiery Orb does is draw aggro. This is less important at higher levels, and with permaDom, and with more controls.

My Soldiers take both armors, but they are used to as 'slot-and-forgot' powers holding Global Resistance pieces. The exact placement of the pieces varies (on the 3 different builds available for my toon) depending on which which set bonuses I'm chasing elsewhere. With Soldiers: I don't always go into the Fitness pool but when I do it is usually for Banes and not Crabs.

I always picture Doctor Doom as a (perma)Dominator...

I have only one bias, and it dates from launch: "Statesman is a Tanker?"

I don't consider Taunts to be control, although I take your point. The main differences from my PoV are: The attention from 'aggro' has a unique relationship between an enemy and a player, whereas a status effect is on the enemy. I can't see at a glance what the aggro situation is, whereas once an enemy has the status applied it is easy to see. There is an 'aggro cap' for a single player, but the ceiling on the number of status-controlled enemies is limited only by geography and the attributes/number of control powers available.

I run a Fortunata that is heavy on AoE and 'controls' (including the Presence pool). It like my Fortunata a lot, but I played a Fire/Psi/Psi Dominator to 50+. Aside from inherent AT differences, the main playstyle difference is that my Dominator opens with Controls and switches to Attacks; the Fortunata starts with AoE and switches to Controls during attack chain gaps. I chose Fire, because of the Fiery Orb ATO (placed in Fire Cages). The other ATO (Recharge/%+Damage) is the 6th slot in Flashfire (along with 5xStupefy). My Dominator build has Defenses that might be considered shockingly low (certainly when compared to my Fortunata), but I was (obviously) chasing Global +Recharge from set bonuses (with no reliance on %+Recharge). Part of the global Recharge strategy for that build involved not catalyzing the 5-pieces of Ascendency of the Dominator. I only mention this because my Fortunata doesn't need that much recharge (although has plenty to keep the nuke and Aim in rotation), so the slotting options are much wider on my Fortunata.

Even though I am aware of the AH cost differences between Superior ATOs and non-catalyzed ATOs, I've never quite been sure why this is the case... I understand the 'buy-it-now' desire, but... Even though Catalysts are not 'cheap' they are relatively easy to earn, either through: Playing a level 50 (one will typically drop every 24 hours with less than 1 hour of play) Merit Vendors (insert approximately one bajillion links to discussions about the different value(s) of merits and items on the marketplace)

My beef is specifically with the Knives who trigger Glorious Vengeance or Rallying Cry (typically as they begin to run/fly away!)

And I won't dispute tossing an (AoE) Immobilize after grouping isn't a bad thing. The only AV where 'running' really bothers me is Diabolique. I'm annoyed by more common enemies like Warwolves, Knives/Talons of Vengance and Teleporting Tsoo Sorcerers/Rikti Headmen for whom Immobilizes won't keep from madly dashing away from combat. I'd like to see 'Control' have a place in the endgame, but with enemies that essential ignore certain controls, I don't know what the path forward is. (EDIT) Full disclosure: If Immobilize actually stops these I've never noticed. I take a Fortunata with Subdue through a lot of content and I have never noticed certain types being Immobilized (by Magnitude 3).

My MMs would kill for more powers that can accept MM ATO.

Disordered thoughts: 1) Saving power tray configurations would be nice. I would be satisfied if there was simply a way to dump to a text file a configuration. Loading them is less important (because powers may not be available upon an attempted reload). 2) The non-saveable non-scalability of the missions from the Ouroboros pillar. I dislike that I have to manually expand it each time to actually see the options to pick the mission. 3) The Incarnate power-select window that doesn't allow for 'collapsing' a choice; it only allows you to select another choice. For example, if I'm looking at the Lore options, I can't just collapse the Lore but must select a different category. 4) Finding Badges. I go looking for badges to monitor progress and to pick new badge names to display. For the former I am annoyed when I've missed a specific exploration badge and try to scroll to figure out which one is missed. For the latter I hate accidentally picking a 'new' badge name and I have to go looking for the one I wanted.

The highlighted portion is where my thoughts go in the discussion. I tend to favor controls that keep the enemies close and clumped. My rough ranking ignoring 'situations' is: (AoE) Confuse, and focused single-target Confuse on enemy 'support'. Seeing a large group like Knives of Artemis all Caltrops themselves is beautiful. Knockdown (and to a lesser extent, Knockup). After that, everything is situational. Single-target Holds are fine for hard targets... AoE Holds/Sleeps can be ok to 'prime' a distant group or after a group has been collected. I'm not a fan of Immobilize: the enemy groups where it would be MOST useful tend to resist it, and it otherwise gets in the way of grouping enemies. Some of the more annoying enemy groups are ranged attackers/support, so immobilizing them doesn't slow them down as much as it slows me down. Instead of Immobilize, I prefer Slow debuff (patches) with an added affect that disrupts enemy attack chains. Fear is similar in this respect from my PoV. Knockback is in a special category: It can be a beautiful thing when used with skill... but even the most skilled user of KB attacks is going to eventually upset a teammate (typically playing a melee AT, or someone who places specific areas of effect). I also like Stuns, but I don't love them, because the enemies don't really stay where I want them (I write this long after the days of stunned enemies madly staggering away at mach speed has been fixed). I really only appreciate a Stun when enough Magnitude stacks on a very hard target.

I have not played Earth/Earth, but I have never been thrilled with PBAoE toggles on my Dominator. Aside from performance, they always seem to require a lot of slots to make worthwhile. On the flip side, the options for slotting are somewhat wider. I am a fan of (area) targeted Slows, especially when they come early in a career. Being able to place them where desired is important to me, and the utility of the power doesn't really change as the game progresses.

Achieving Perma-Dom (in the current HC game) is one of those incredible sweet spots that I think folks should be incredibly reluctant to interfere with. I believe that almost all of the suggested 'small tweaks' I've read risk upsetting what I see as the delicate balance that gives this AT its flavor. One of the least stated synergies between having the Global +Recharge necessary for perm-Domination is that with so much Recharge, a Dominator can be spamming clicks fast enough that the Endurance bar refill provided by Domination becomes an incredibly important method of Endurance management. For my Dominator, refilling the Endurance bar is my Endurance management strategy. Yes the control boosts and the mez resists are awesome, but for my money it is the in-battle twin cycles of Recharge -> Domination -> +Endurance and Recharge -> Attacks/Controls -> -Endurance that really make the AT click for me. I can play it like a madman if I have to, but I don't have to keep up the constant fight if I don't want to.

I can only share my experiences, but on my lvl 50+ Dominator: When playing solo I spend time traveling between missions and watching cutscenes/NPC dialogue in addition to visiting my SG base, vendors, AH, etc. There are significant in-game mechanisms that prevent a character from constantly "fighting". On team missions, sure the bar can refill faster, but on most PUGs there are also periods of just 'standing around'. As I wrote initially, from my PoV 'fighting constantly to maintain a bonus effect' feels much more like a Brute. I don't like that part of the Brute AT, and so porting that effect to another AT (Dominator) does not appeal to me. I am not unsymapthetic to characters that don't have perma-Dom; I especially feel on my Controllers as they are leveling up.

It would make Dominators play like Brutes (having to race to refill a bar), which is not appealing.

Also not a "real pet", but the ATO spawns can have multiple instances at once.

I'm going to chime in that the Traps T9 (for Defenders/Corruptors and Masterminds... but to be fair, with MMs it is more because the loss of the pet is a combined loss of DPS and a waste of time) is (in most cases) a waste. I can imagine the reasoning behind trying to make that set's T9 a 'nuke', but I feel like that was the wrong direction for that set to go in, considering the (other, placed on ground) powers that come before. If I was going to spitball a replacement T9 power for 'Traps', I'd start by considering some sort of 'mechanical device' that behaved like an aura that provided +Res(All) and/or +DMG. You know... like a vastly improved version of what is in the Leadership pool.

I had exactly one "Dark ______" on live, and it was entirely due to the name of my original launch character on one server being taken on another. This seems like a rather petty thing to be annoyed about. Given the (forced) name change I opted to start the character red side. You could make the same point about 'Rad' or 'Frost'.

Is this true (for Patron pool pets)? The only reason I have to doubt this is based on my experience with Crabber's "T1" pets; they behave subtly different than Fire Imps (my experience with Dominator pets) . I never had my Crabbermind playing with a /Kin, and I had the recharge for the Patron pet set to be just good enough that I could resummon it when it expired (from the timer). From memory: Fire Imps: Stick around until defeated; if fewer than three are defeated, a resummon gets you three new instances all at once. Spiderlings: Stick around until the timer expires (or defeated); if fewer than three are defeated, a resummon will 'reload' you up to three, but the new ones will expire on the original timer (of the previously surviving/non-replaced pets). Patron pets exist outside the Crabbermind secondary, and neither of these describe the T1/T2 mastermind pet resummons, so I suppose the Patron pets could behave 'better'.

I can include my Dark/Temp/Force Build. This build doesn't worry about Defense so much. It isn't soloing EXTREME content much, but it was part of a successful 3-man Master of ITF (where one of the triumvirate was a lvl 42 scrapper!) It also has some odd choices (some made for flavor) that I can try to rationalize. I went heavily into set bonuses for Global Recharge and Accuracy, trying to pick up Global Defenses where possible. It includes Hasten, but in practice I rarely use it. Chronos is on Auto-fire. Hasten could be perma if I bothered to pay attention to it. The Defiant Barrage set is not Superior as it would be a sixth +10% Global Recharge. Chronos fires so frequently (~every 22-ish seconds, with the 90% extra %proc chance) that I only added Aim as an extra to cover the occasional times when I want a boost and Chronos has worn off. I added the Kismet: +Accuracy (really +ToHit) to Maneuvers basically to keep the Moonbeam (Snipe) damage boosted/capped. This was a late tweak to the build... it wasn't having any Endurance issues, so I pulled an extra slot from Stamina (or Health?). Maneuvers has to be toggle on for the bonus to work. The extra Snipe damage from +ToHit will be capped during the periods when Chronos/Aim are active, so this Kismet bonus is really just covering about 10 seconds in the attack chain (the gap from Chronos, assuming Aim isn't used). TBH, my build has too many attacks; the less frequently used ones are for set bonuses. I basically spam the Primary attacks, and mix in the Temporal ones when the mood strikes me. Repulsion Bomb is almost never used unless I want to try knock a large group around or try to apply some -Res. That attack was essentially added because I dipped into Force Mastery for IO mules. Arcane Bolt is part of the flavor, and made Rune of Protection possible. You may notice that I skipped Tenebrous Tentacles. I considered using this in place of Repulsion Bomb, but honestly I like the look of Repulsion Bomb more! EDIT: I used Time Shift while leveling up, but I found that it was interrupting the flow of my attacks. Normally I am a fan of Stuns, but on this DPS-focused character it wasn't helping. The Build: Here is the code:

I'm curious to read if anyone has tried alternating the Soulbound Allegiance %Build Up proc between the 3 Lil' pets and the 1 Big pet? I have always included in the lower level pets, with the assumption being that they "need it more". I often see more than one of them with the %Build Up icon in their buffs. EDIT: we had some discussion about this a while back. You can see in the linked thread that I also put the Overwhelming Force KB->KD piece in the Lil' pets, so to increase their contribution to the madness.

My experience is that the ATs only start to differentiate around level 14, by level 20 most will start to feel and play in different ways. You've identified a couple of the sets that don't exactly fit this pattern. My experience with Masterminds is that the play experience shifts as you level up. At low levels, you have to focus on keeping your (small number of) pets alive to be able to provide your DPS. At higher levels, you have more strategic options... and more powerful pets. Dominators are the latest of the late bloomers. You really do need to plan to have as much +Recharge as possible to achieve perma-Dom. This is typically achieved through Global +Recharge bonuses from IO pieces and sets... and this requires the correct powers and slots that you won't have until you have leveled up. One irony of Dominators is that once they have the Recharge (from sets), they can exemplar down and will be MUCH more powerful than they were previously. This is true of all ATs (with level 50+ slotting) but Dominators really notice it. I've been taking (mostly solo, 2xDFB for some stat boosts) a new non-DPS alt through blue-side without using XP boosters, and I am surprised how quickly its progressing. I'm primarily doing a combination of old solo missions and radio calls. YMMV.

Controllers: I see a lot of people pairing Gravity/Time, but I honestly think Gravity/Kinetics is the basic pairing that demonstrates 'mastery over the forces of nature (and all who obey those laws)'. For both Controllers and Dominators: If there is a single pool power that screams 'I AM YOUR MASTER' I would nominate using Hover (or even better Group Fly) to slowly progress through mission maps as you lock down enemy after enemy as you (appropriately) look down upon them all.

I feel like somebody moved into the PVP space, and relisting seems like part of their strategy. I can only describe my own use of the PVP pieces. I tend to use PvP pieces while leveling; it's uncommon that I have a 50+ build that includes non-proc pieces. My (personal) SG is catalyst/merit/inf rich, so since PvP recipes drop at all levels, my SG crafts them all and stores them... lower level ones get slotted (and often attuned, despite the potential 'waste'). If storage is getting tight, I will often roll un-attuned sub-50s into something 'valuable' and list it on the market... but never in quantity. After the lvl 50 respec, attuned pieces go back into the bins... and if keeping the pieces in the build I'll switch to level 50s for boosting...I'll greedily try to get as much of everything as possible (watching Recharge, naturally). Just last night I realized I didn't have an attuned Panacea proc handy for a new character, so the new character grabbed converters (from 'Character Items inventory' ) and just rolled into one.